for action. 'Courts' were established to try and punish miners who were drunk or advocated violence. Pickets were set up throughout the region, and Johnson received regular reports every hour of the day regarding traffic in and out of the towns in the valley. Huts were built and food served to care for the miners encamped on Bull Hill and throughout the region. Talks between the miners and the mine owners led to an agreement on June 4. But by this time, the mine owners had paid the local sheriff to raise another 1,200 deputies. Governor Waite declared the force of deputies to be illegal and disbanded, but the sheriff said he could no longer control the men. Waite ordered that the state militia restore order in the region. Johnson's preparations averted disaster again. On the morning of June 5, the force of ex-deputies attempted to charge the miners on Bull Hill. Johnson's pickets alerted the miners encampment, allowing them to sound the Victor Mine's steam whistle. The alarm brought the state militia to the hill in time to intercept the men and stop their advance. Johnson's role in suppressing violence on the evening of May 25, 1894, is difficult to overestimate. But some scholars argue that Johnson saved the strike: The miners' unions, and the people of the state in general, owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Johnson for his heroic work on that day. Had hundreds of drink-crazed men broken loose with unlimited whiskey and unlimited dynamite, the result had defied description. Scarcely a mine in the district would have been left whole, and one may hardly hazard a guess as to other consequences. (Rastall, p. 34) Governor Waite, a Populist, was sympathetic to the miners' cause. But public opinion blamed the union for the violence at Cripple Creek. Had warfare between the miners and deputies broken out, Waite would have been forced to break the strike and the outcome of the Cripple Creek job action would have been dramatically different. Later life Junius J. Johnson left Colorado after the Cripple Creek strike to avoid arrest. He need not have done so: Mass arrests of miners did occur, but only four strikers were ever tried and all were pardoned. Johnson settled in Little Rock, Arkansas. When the Spanish–American War broke out in 1898, he was appointed a colonel of an Arkansas regiment. He died as his troops